1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to a system for consuming and publishing electronic media. The system may be used for consuming and publishing electronic media on web pages displayed by web browsers on computers, phones, touch-pads, etc. The present invention may also be used for generating layouts for traditional print publishing in books, magazines, newspapers, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditional publishing systems require graphic artists, editors and revenue officers to agree on how to layout content for publishing. For example, an editor decides which article might be the most popular article, a graphic artist figures out how best to fit the headlines, pictures, and text for various articles on a page and a revenue officer will decide how much space to allocate to advertisements. The process relies on the expertise of the people involved to layout the ads and content.
Social media systems like twitter and Facebook allow users to consumer media in their activity stream (a list of articles, comments, photos, etc shared from people they follow). The media they consume can easily be shared with others by using the re-share functionality of these social network systems.
Search engines allow one to type in a query and display results from a database related to the query. These search engine database is a copy of all data published on the web and typically includes just a sample of and a link to the media available from the website.
Browsers allow one to open multiple windows displayed in a tab format for easy navigation from one web page to another. Sometimes the web pages are dynamically updated so real-time updates are available upon clicking on a tab, but in most cases, the web pages are not dynamically updated and require a user action to refresh the page.
There is a need for harmonious tiling systems and methods that design interfaces or present content in a dynamic manner. Currently, when laying out interface elements on a screen, or text and images in print, or articles on a blog, etc., each element is positioned within a container of fixed size. The layouts tend to be one of two generally fixed natures:                Automatically fixed in a structure of minimal complexity, like a vertical list, or 3D ‘carousel’, etc. Likewise, data feeds of such structures tend to be homogenous in that they tend to have elements of the same type, i.e., articles in a blog, images in a gallery, results from a search.        Manually fixed in arbitrary structures, ie. a website where each element is manually fixed to a precise position and size. Likewise, such layouts do not generally have a overarching data structure for the elements in the layout.        
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.